KPF Featured in Urban Global Design issue of New York Magazine

October 11 2011

KPF and several of the firm’s projects are applauded in Justin Davidson’s article "What New York Can Steal From Hong Kong Or Copenhagen, or Tokyo, or even Medellín. The building of a better capital of the world." Davidson points to Roppongi Hills, Songdo International Business District (IBD), and Hudson Yards in his story. “The obvious solution to the divide between the Hong Kong and Copenhagen models is to merge them,” writes Davidson, “New York already does this somewhat—Bryant Park is a little patch of Scandinavia across the street from the cloud-skimming Bank of America Tower—but the New Yorkers who are doing it most assiduously are working in South Korea. From offices overlooking Bryant Park, the developer Stan Gale and the architects at Kohn Pedersen Fox have drawn up a kit-built metropolis called New Songdo City, a $35 billion project now rising on a 1,500-acre swath of reclaimed land outside Seoul, hard by Incheon International Airport.” In reference to Songdo IBD, Davidson continues: “KPF describes its anti-utopian plan as a patchwork of pieces derived from cities which we know to have provided successful living environments … In fact, we have our own New Songdo on the way: Hudson Yards, a miniature New York version of a Korean mini–New York, planned by the team at KPF.”